Mission Majjhima with Clear Mountain Monastery

Clear Mountain happily invites you to join in “Mission Majjhima!”, an online, ongoing, onward-leading (opanayiko) Sutta study series meeting every Sunday from 5-6pm PT. Each week – over the course of 152 weeks – a new 9-minute video will be premiered at 5pm as part of the 9-Minute Majjhima playlist on the Clear Mountain Youtube Channel, featuring Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho discussing each of the 152 Discourses of the Majjhima Nikāya, the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (full schedule & translations here). Immediately following each week’s YouTube premier, all are invited to join the discussion of that week’s sutta via Zoom. To maximize the quality of the group discussion, we recommend that participants read the week’s sutta ahead of time. Discussion may also occur at other times on Clear Mountain’s Discord server. A guide to the format, schedule, and additional materials may be found here.

YouTube (5 – 5:10 PT)
Tune in with fellow practitioners every Sunday evening at 5:00 pm PT for a monastic reflection on each of the Discourses in the Majjhima Nikāya, The Middle Length Discourses.

YouTube playlist

Zoom (5:10 – 6:00 PT)
Following the 9-minute monastic introduction of the week’s sutta on YouTube, those who wish may join a 50-minute Zoom session in which they’ll have the chance to discuss the reading. Newcomers welcome! An optional silent meditation period from 6-7pm PT will follow.

11 Likes

Great initiative, I wish you the best! :pray:

4 Likes

The MN 1 video is convincingly explained by Kovilo, where Kovilo explains maññati in MN 1 as explained in MN 113:

For whatever they imagine it is, it turns out to be something else.

Yena yena hi maññanti tato taṁ hoti aññathā’ti.

MN 113

Nisabho’s correlation of abhinandati in MN 1 with nandirāgasahagatā tatratatrābhinandinī in SN 56.11 also sounds logical. However, Nisabho’s attempt to correlate the three persons (puthujjana, trainee & fully enlightened) in MN 1 with the three turnings of each Truth in SN 56.11 did not sound convincing. Obviously the 3rd & 4th truth do not correlate with the puthujjana. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

In the MN 2 video, Nisabho’s emphasis upon asava is ‘defilement’ sounds misdirecting. Asava reads to be used to describe the ‘emergence’ or ‘outflow’ of defilement rather than mere defilement.

Kovilo’s commentary on the variety of methods (‘tool belt’) is convincing.